was an innocuous conversation in which we talked about many things, and nothing at the same time. During a lull in our banter she detonated a bomb: “I’m buying a gun.”
We had no guns in or near our home, and zero conversations about purchasing such. Nevertheless my level-headed, young adult daughter announced to me—in that same casual way she shared the fact that she was purchasing a car—“I’m buying a gun.”
She was tracking with a growing trend among black Americans, who, in droves, are purchasing firearms. This major surge in gun acquisition in the black community exploded in 2020, with the data indicating a phenomenon in the making. Yet, the “gunning up” of America, represents only one indicator of our crisis-level distrust and disunity.
In 2020 alone the National Shooting Sports Foundation reported purchases by black men and women increased by 58%. All along, and especially in the last decade, white Americans stocked their own weapaons, but the headline now is the sharp rise of black folk joining the frenzy of gun ownership. Black America, is gunning up at a suprising rate, although in the sheer numbers of weapons, whites maintain a dominance. Forbes reported similar increases in gun sales by yet more entrants into the American obsession: Asians.
Over a period of several weeks in the early spring of 2021, a number of articles appeared in various journals, all saying the same thing, and strikingly, almost all using one particular word to describe the present mindset of Americans: languishing.
To languish is a state of depression and a feeling of being dispirited. The diagnosis makes plenty of sense considering the recent cloudburst of events—the COVID-19 pandemic, the violent exit from office of a president, and bad policing taking center stage. The Guardian, in a revealing article, “Black Americans Flock to Guns Stores and Clubs,” puts forth the main drivers of the gun purchase frenzy among black Americans. As suspected they are stressed from the pandemic, the resurgence of mass shootings, and supremely, the sight of armed, white protestors rallying against lockdown orders and in support of white supremacy. And we can certainly add one more: questionable police tactics when it comes to black bodies.
Yet, the word languishing hardly captures the complexity of the present moment, one in which Americans are “gunning up” at a clip never imagined.
Maybe there’s something darker and more ominous about this mindset of languishing than we see. The “languishing” might be better defined as a sense of impending doom, and a powerlessness to do anything about it. The current flashpoints in American culture are volcanic, and if not cooled, the hot lava of violence will invariably spill over the rim—wreaking havoc to anything and everything in their path.
There is something unsettling in a culture that opts for division rather than unity.
Basic things that should produce unity of purpose, divide us.
As always in America, the complicating factor is the sinister racial through line that has been the constant of our cultural sickness. The result is a familiar one: violence. By and large racial violence has been one-sided in the United States. Whites have outgunned and outmatched everyone else in the size of their private arsenals and have usually come out on top.
With dystopian-like analysis in the AP piece, “A Race War Evident Long Before the Capitol Siege”, William Barber, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, indicts our system, now so septic, it spews violence. Black people who have historically been on the losing end of our nation’s racially-driven violence—from the massacre on Black Wall Street in Tulsa to lynchings across the South at the hands of rabid mobs—have now joined the white trend in the buying up of weaponry. The mindset and “heartset” is clear: “We will be ready the next time.”
Black neighborhoods have suffered disproportionately from gun violence—much of it driven by the internecine violence of young brothers and their warped sense of manhood. Although we can acknowledge the intramural violence in our communities, there is a greater threat on the horizon propelling us now.
Black Americans survived historically via our collective mantra that “this too shall pass” and our ability to stay standing, was always our superpower! But something has broken. We’re not so sure this time around if “this too” will pass.
What we do observe is that Americans are fearful of other Americans. What we do know is that power is demographically shifting in the country from those who have always had it. What we can predict, is that with the personal arms race, and the sheer massiveness of personal arsenals, we will inevitably turn on each other.
Our country, over time, has had a series of “windows of opportunities” to come to grips with the original sin of racism. But each time we’ve retreated. Last summer, Black Lives Matter (BLM) was hot in the wake of George Floyd’s death, evincing wide support—among diverse races and cultures—of the black community’s long-held policing concerns. However, the clap-back from many whites is now more publicly intense than ever compared to the last several decades.
Call it fear. Call it hatred. The protracted racial divisions of our country are coming to a head. The sheer volume of guns proliferating will ensure that. And this time, it won’t be just black verses white. It will be Americans verses Americans.
Where do we go from here? We open the Bible and get God’s perspective:
“Don’t be naïve. There are difficult times ahead. As the end approaches, people are going to be self-absorbed, money-hungry, self-promoting, stuck-up, profane, contemptuous of parents, crude, coarse, dog-eat-dog, unbending, slanderers, impulsively wild, savage, cynical, treacherous, ruthless, bloated windbags, addicted to lust, and allergic to God,” (2 Timothy 3:1-4, Message Translation).
What keeps us going, given what’s up ahead? It’s simple. We know this present darkness will terminate, setting off the most anticipated event ever—the Second Coming of Jesus! But while we wait, we are not oblivious to the dreary shadows descending on our culture, closing in all around on us.
Does this mean we avert our eyes and write off the harsh realities affecting our world? No. Do we care about injustice and legitimate fears? Of course, we do! We just respond in a different way. We refuse to return hate for hate, or violence for violence. We embrace the radical and countercultural teachings of Jesus to be peacemakers, do good to those that hate you, care for people, be a light producer for those around you, and don’t plot evil.
Even in our increasingly violent world, we impact it for good, while we can.
